


Secrets

by AtropaAzraelle (Polyoxyethylene)



Series: Of Walls and Nerds [24]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Ardyn is a bastard, Deceit, M/M, he had to entertain himself in the ten years somehow, hints of phone sex, trickery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 09:03:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13361220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polyoxyethylene/pseuds/AtropaAzraelle
Summary: Ignis and Gladio spend far too much time apart, and someone sees an opportunity to toy with Noct's friends.





	1. Prologue

“I hate this.”

The wall was cool against Ignis's back as he listened to Gladio, one arm folded across his stomach, and his head bowed. “I know,” he replied, softly.

“I should be there with you. How can I protect you if I'm never there?”

Ignis shook his head. The phone was growing hot against his cheek, but it was the first time the signal hadn't dropped out on them after a couple of minutes in over a week. “Protecting those convoys is protecting us,” he said, gently, but firmly. “They need you, Gladio.”

“So do you.”

“I want you, that's not the same as need.”

There was a huff on the other end of the phone, and Ignis got the impression that Gladio was trying to gather his thoughts. He'd always been one to walk while on the phone, back and forth across a room, spending a minute leaning on a railing before heading back again. He couldn't do that right now; he'd moved two feet at the start of the call and they'd nearly lost the signal again. “You sure everything's okay there?”

“I'm fine,” he said. “Prompto's in town so he's coming for dinner tonight.”

“Tell him he's a lucky bastard.”

Ignis smiled at that. Food was scarce, but at least knowing hunters meant that Ignis got access to meat and grains beyond the allowance of rations. “He may not be,” Ignis replied, amusement colouring his tone, “it depends what he brings for me to cook.”

“It's still gonna be better than what we get here,” Gladio said. “Did you know Monica makes Malboro Tentacle Soup?”

Ignis winced at the thought. Malboros were not the most pleasant smelling of creatures, and their appearance left a lot to be desired. He doubted they made for a particularly appetising dish. “Well, that sounds unique,” he said, charitably.

“Iggy, I couldn't even look at it,” Gladio said. “I swear it _waved_ at me.”

“And to think people complained about my tofu,” Ignis said, hiding his grin from the world by bowing his head.

“Hey,” Gladio said, “the tofu was fine if you got past the smell. This smelled bad, looked bad, and didn't taste great, either.”

“You managed to eat it?” Ignis asked, not bothering to hide his surprise.

“I was _really_ hungry,” Gladio said, defensively.

Ignis laughed, and for a moment, a brief moment, all seemed right with the world. Talking to Gladio always brought him back down to earth, brought him back to himself after so long wrapped up in strategy and the arduous task of trying to keep the world spinning until Noct returned. He sighed when he caught himself settling into that space in his mind reserved for himself and Gladio, where he could just be himself. “I miss you,” he admitted.

“I've got another couple of convoys due,” Gladio said, “and then I'll be able to come home.” There was a pause, and then Gladio asked, “You'll be there, right?”

“I'm not going anywhere until you're back safe,” Ignis confirmed.

“You still don't want me to come with you?”

There was a trace of something in Gladio's voice. Uncertainty, perhaps; it sounded like he was trusting Ignis, though perhaps against his better judgement, or at the very least against his instincts. Ignis smiled softly, “I want you to,” he answered, “but the world needs you more, and this can't wait until the world can spare you.”

“It can always wait, Iggy.”

“No it can't,” Ignis replied, his voice barely breaking above a whisper. “Don't worry about me. I'll be in good hands.”

“I'd rather you were in my hands,” Gladio murmured.

Ignis smiled into his phone at that. “Get those deliveries in safely and I can be,” he replied, his voice low.

“Aye, aye, captain,” Gladio replied, with deliberate care. “So,” he pressed, “you alone right now?”

Ignis had to give his answer some thought. Iris had said she'd be by with Prompto, but she'd taken up the remarkably capitalist venture of a clothing stall, which kept her occupied until what classed for evening these days. It wasn't that late as yet, surely? “I think I have a little time,” he admitted, reaching down to play with the button of his trousers between his thumb and finger.


	2. Secrets

Worse than the encroaching darkness, worse than the daemons, worse than not knowing where Noct was or if he'd be back, was the time apart. It had been one thing when Ignis had been safely ensconced in Lestallum, with Iris to keep an eye on him, and Cor to keep him tied up being useful. Iggy didn't make too much of a fuss about not being in the midst of the daemon hunting when he was needed elsewhere, and if he couldn't be with Gladio everywhere he went, then Gladio would settle for him being holed up behind Lestallum's barricades with Cor at one side of him, and the reformed Kingsglaive at the other.

Ignis was too damn good at his job, though. He always had been, and he'd been training to fight on the side while he'd been busy saving Cor from the logistical nightmare of keeping a population alive, despite its best efforts, during the apocalypse.

Because that's what it was, or what it was becoming. The fields were brown, and the creatures had gone mad in the dark, and the ones that hadn't were going that way. No one wanted to sit and estimate how many human lives had been lost already, and how many more there might be to lose. No one except Ignis, anyway, and he'd kept his estimates to himself, although Gladio had held him a little tighter through the night when a wagonload of refugees from Cauthess had shipped in, dirty, and bloodied, and mourning. Ignis hadn't slept that night, although he'd pretended he had, and Gladio hadn't slept either, spending the night wishing that holding Ignis in his arms was enough to keep the whole world safe for him.

Gladio knew that day had helped push Ignis into deciding he had to help fight the daemons too. They'd secured what supply routes they could, had mapped out which ones they needed, and which they could afford to lose. Monica and the Exineris workers had the Kingsglaive running around retrieving shards of the Meteor to keep the continent lit up. Meldacio was building weapons as only they could, and Cor and the hunters were keeping everyone fed, and safe.

Now that everything had been set into some form of order, it could keep running, Ignis had said. Which meant Ignis didn't need to stay stuck in Lestallum any more. There were other tasks that needed his attention, and chief among those was finding out more about the prophecy of the True King.

At first it hadn't been so bad. Prompto had brought detailed pictures of the architecture of the royal tombs, and Ignis had gone over them with both Prompto and Talcott until they'd built, in Iggy's mind, a detailed picture of the ancient symbols of Lucis. But the tombs would only tell so much, and Ignis had got it into his head to go and visit as many of the ancient ruins as they could reach. Half the hellholes and daemon pits they'd traipsed through with Noct were on his list of terrible vacation sites he simply had to visit, and Gladio could only get him to put it off so long.

Gladio had told him he didn't need to go himself. One of Vyv's photographers would be happy to oblige, or he could wait for Prompto to be free, and then he could review the evidence afterwards the same way he had with the tombs. But Ignis wouldn't have it. He needed to go, he'd said, because he needed to be sure he wasn't missing anything.

There was no convincing Ignis when he was adamant about something, and Gladio had spent one last night making sure Ignis felt every reason Gladio could give him to come back before he'd been the one waving his partner farewell at Lestallum's gate. At least, Gladio told himself, he was with Aranea. Iggy had trained with Aranea when Gladio wasn't around, learning to use his lance all over again from another lance user, and it was coming back to him, he'd said. At the very least, Gladio told himself, that training meant the two of them knew each other's style and limitations well enough to look out for each other properly.

Gladio would have still preferred to go along himself. Ignis had refused to tell him _where_ the ruins he was investigating were. “No matter what the answer is, you won't like it,” he'd said, and he'd been right, but Gladio still thought not knowing was worse. Not knowing meant that he could find himself in the area and be none the wiser, that Ignis could be injured, in need of help and only a short distance away, and Gladio wouldn't know.

“It also means,” Ignis had told him, when he'd said this, “that you can't conveniently find yourself in the area despite being needed elsewhere. You have a job to do, Gladio, and I need to do this one.”

He hated the separation, and it was made all the worse by the problems they were having with the phone service. The Glaives had been doing their best to defend the signal towers, but some of them had still fallen to daemons, or mad beasts, and there were now whole swathes of Lucis with next to no reception. Their repair was on the long list of tasks Cor and Exineris had for the able bodied, but, Cor had said, keeping the signal going in populated areas like Meldacio, Galdin, Lestallum, and Cauthess came first.

It still meant that Gladio, ensconced behind the lights at the Prairie Outpost, looked at his phone four times an hour to see a stubborn red symbol showing no service, and thus, no contacting Ignis to see if he'd got to somewhere safe yet. The generators at the outpost gave off a persistent hum; they hadn't connected this part of the continent to the Exineris lines just yet, and the sound was almost soothing in its presence. There were more lights coming from the Glaive camp on Lepellieth haven, a hundred feet away. 

Formouth garrison loomed on the skyline, and even from here, the cries of the daemons inside it echoed in the dark air. The plan was to liberate supplies; the garrison held a lot of fuel, vehicles, weapons, and ammunition. If they could clear it of daemons entirely, they could even light it up, make it a local base in Northern Leide, and use it to sweep across and keep Hammerhead supplied, and access to the nearby havens clear.

Gladio had done his guard stint, keeping patrol to ensure the daemons didn't creep too close to the vehicles. Daemons chittered at the perimeter's edge in the depths of night, but they didn't venture too close to the spotlights. The danger would have been from anything big getting close enough to damage the lights, or the generators, but aside from a lone Red Giant, flaming sword lit up like a beacon in the night, there was nothing to be concerned about.

He was relieved after four hours by a Glaive whose name he didn't know, giving him a chance to get some shut eye before they launched their attack on Formouth in the thin light they called day now. He could have traipsed up to the haven, settled himself in to a one man tent that was too small, surrounded by spotlights, and the sounds of sleeping Glaives, but the times he had it hadn't felt right and he never really rested surrounded by strangers. Instead he went into the caravan, where there was at least a semblance of privacy.

His phone still stubbornly showed no signal as he had a utilitarian wash in the caravan's sink, and it didn't improve when he moved to the far end of the caravan, and the unoccupied bed to take off his shoes and lie down. He didn't bother stripping off. If something big and ugly came along in a couple of hours, at least he could stamp his boots back onto his feet and be ready to go, but no one needed to see him rush out to fight an Iron Giant in the buff.

He used to curl up with Ignis, in the caravans they'd stayed in. Hell, he'd done it in this caravan, with Noct and Prompto at the far end pretending they weren't sitting up until the early hours playing Kings Knight, and Ignis, exhausted from an early start and a late night, curled up to his side and already out like a light. If Gladio closed his eyes he could almost, almost convince himself it was just another night like that. If he concentrated, he almost swore he could hear Iggy's gentle, steady breathing next to him.

He didn't react when the caravan shook with footsteps, the door creaking open, and closing with a click. Maybe someone was coming to use the sink, or even the bed at the other end of the van. It didn't really matter; it wasn't a threat. The dull sound of feet echoed in Gladio's head, and the van shook slightly with each footfall. Someone went in the bathroom, and Gladio settled back down as he heard water run. He was almost asleep again when the footsteps started back up, approaching his end of the van.

“Occupied!” he called, not really wanting someone to walk in and find that out the hard way. It was the disturbance he'd rather avoid, if he was honest.

“Gladio?”

Gladio sat up sharply. It couldn't be, surely? But there were ruins at Keycatrich, and a tomb nearby, and maybe that was where he'd gone? This was the first safe port on the way out from those. “Iggy?” He was off the bed in a flash, pulling the door open to see.

Stood there, fresh faced and scarred, hair a little damp from the sink, was Ignis. Gladio took a moment to look him over, seeing with relief that there were no new injuries; he was standing fine, his shoes and clothes and stick weren't torn or bloodied, it sounded like he'd been walking okay too. Relief and joy washed over and through Gladio before he swooped forward and pulled Ignis to him in a hug. His hand settled around the back of Iggy's hip, the other sinking into his hair, his heart dancing with relief as he pressed a kiss to Iggy's mouth.

He felt Iggy startle in his arms, and his body pull away from Gladio in that first instance, a first instance that went on a fraction too long, and the taste of his mouth wasn't exactly as Gladio remembered. The persistent tang of coffee had been absent from Iggy's kiss for months now, and Gladio had never thought that Ignis tasted of very much at all, in himself. He tasted like his breath; warm, and alive, and familiar, minty in the morning before breakfast, or just after crawling into bed at night, and sometimes Gladio could taste spices on his lips, or feel the burn of peppers on his tongue, heating his mouth and searing Gladio's own lips with the bite of his cooking.

His lips now tasted wrong, and he hadn't curled an arm around Gladio's back, or dropped his stick to hold Gladio in turn as he usually would.

Gladio pulled back, looking at Ignis critically for a split second before he let him go, stepping back and summoning his greatsword.

“I'll admit,” Ignis said, but the accent was missing even if the voice was the same, “that was a more enthusiastic greeting than I anticipated.” 'Ignis' looked at the sword in Gladio's hand, and raised his own hand up to his hair. “Do put that away. There's no room to swing it in here.”

When he brought his hand down again there was a hat in it, and Ignis faded like a mirage, leaving only Ardyn underneath. Gladio growled at him, readying his sword to heave it at Ardyn. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk,” Ardyn answered, gesturing at the small table and booth seating in the centre of the caravan with his hat. “A catch up, if you will.”

“Give me one good reason not to run you through,” Gladio spat, but his mind was in a flurry of panic. No one else was in earshot, and no one else stood even half a chance against Ardyn if it came to a fight. He was here, and presumably wanted Gladio for something, but what?

“Did it work in Gralea?” Ardyn asked, amusement making his tone lilt. He turned with a flourish and took a seat at the camper table, resting back so that he almost looked like a reclining prince in the throne of this dirty dishevelled caravan. “I'd always had suspicions about you two,” he said. “Up until I met _Iggy_ in Altissia, of course.”

Gladio felt as if his heart stopped in his chest. There was implication in those words, and the smirk on Ardyn's face, but Gladio couldn't tell if it was implied threat, or something worse. He surged forward, gripping Ardyn by the front of his shirt and pulling him up, adrenaline coursing through his veins as his heart restarted at ten times the speed. “What did you do to him?” he snarled, through gritted teeth, the words twisting with anger.

A hand settled over the top of his, and the amusement fell away from Ardyn's expression. “Please,” he said, as if he was talking to a stubborn child, “you can't hurt me, but I am rather fond of these clothes.”

He was right. Gladio remembered all too well how he'd sliced at Ardyn when he'd walked away as Noct was taken into the Crystal. His blade had gone right through. It had been like cutting smoke.

Gladio growled again, letting the bastard's clothes go, and letting his greatsword fall back into the aether from which it came with a flash of blue.

“There,” Ardyn said, smiling at him, “now we can speak like civilised people.”

Gladio felt his blood boil again, and he rounded on Ardyn with a closed fist, smashing it into Ardyn's face. He made contact, he felt the sickening, satisfying crunch of bones beneath his knuckles, the meaty cushioning of a cheek caught between Ardyn's skull and Gladio's fist. Ardyn reeled back on the caravan seat, and Gladio pulled his hand back, his knuckles throbbing painfully but sweetly. “Civilised just means behaviour befitting the city,” he growled. “The city owed you.”

Ardyn sat back up, rubbing at his cheek as if he'd been bitten by a mosquito, and gave Gladio a sharp look. “I'll grant you that one,” he warned, “but not another.”

“I'll ask you again,” Gladio said, still able to feel his blood simmering under his skin, “what did you do to Iggy?”

“Nothing, I assure you,” Ardyn said. “He's off at the Pitioss Ruins right now, trying to find some way to stop me once and for all,” he added, relaxing back into the seat again and giving Gladio a dangerous, calculated look. “I do hope he doesn't slip. Some of those jumps are _treacherous_ even when you can _see_.”

Gladio felt his lip curling before he'd even realised his anger was showing. He'd never heard of Pitioss, but Iggy hadn't shared all the results of his research into Lucian history with him. He'd probably come across mention of it in there, somewhere, the same way Talcott had heard rumours about a royal tomb hidden behind a waterfall. He wasn't, he told himself, clenching his fist so hard his fingers hurt, going to give Ardyn the satisfaction of asking about Pitioss. “So what do you want with me?” he asked, keeping his temper on a steady simmer, instead of the rolling boil it was desperate to become.

“To catch up,” Ardyn said, amiably, “see how you're doing fighting the good fight against the daemons and the dark.” Something about his smile was sinister, like something that lived in the deepest depths of the darkest ocean, and Gladio fought with himself not to take a step back away from it. “You've not been affected by the scourge, have you?”

“No,” Gladio answered, defiant and firm. Ardyn had a point here, he had to. This asshole had tricked Noct into pushing Prompto off a train. He'd led them to Titan, and then rescued them, stolen their car and enticed them into a Nif base, and then called Ravus off. It was like he was playing a constant game of cat and mouse, making playful swipes to see how they scattered, and then letting them get far enough away that they thought they were safe before carefully herding them back into the reach of his paws. Ignis had said he was five steps ahead of them at every turn, and Ignis was right.

“Good!” Ardyn said, so brightly Gladio almost wondered if he was being genuine. “It takes those that fall into despair the easiest, you see. If you were to look around,” he said, gesturing with his arm at the inside of the caravan, “and see the wider world cast into shadow, beset by daemons. Your prince, lost in the crystal, your lover, blinded by his own loyalty to an unworthy weakling of a king-to-be.”

Gladio snarled, his hand slamming down on the tabletop so hard that it bounced, and Ardyn's hat jumped with it. “He's not unworthy,” he spat, bending down to Ardyn's eye level and refusing to flinch away from it, “and he's not weak. He's got what it takes to finish you.”

“Do you really think so?” Ardyn asked, a delighted smile coming to his lips. He didn't lean back, staying menacingly close to Gladio's face as he spoke. “Does Ignis? Is that why he's out risking his life trying to find a way to stop me? He has such unwavering faith in your prince, and yet where is he now?”

Gladio felt his nostrils flare as he met Ardyn's eyes, seeing where the brown bled slowly into an unnatural yellow, and he pulled away sharply with a huff. “If we can stop you before Noct gets back, even better,” he answered, ignoring the way Ardyn's words pricked and posed their own questions. A way to stop Ardyn, a way to hold back the darkness, more information on the prophecy, they'd all seemed perfectly reasonable when Ignis had talked about them, but what did he really think he might find that was worth risking his own life? What was so important it couldn't wait? He'd never been able to get Iggy to answer properly.

Ardyn laughed. The sound was soft, and mocking. “Of course,” he said, “he wouldn't tell you. There's a lot he doesn't tell you, isn't there?” He stood, and Gladio found himself taking a step back before he'd even realised it, and then was angry with himself for doing so. “There's a lot everyone doesn't tell you. You're just a big dumb brute with a shield and a sword, they can't expect you to understand.” Ardyn took a step towards Gladio, and Gladio inhaled, standing his ground, letting his chest swell and his shoulders fall back as if Ardyn was squaring up to him. “Not sweet, silly little Prompto, and the truth of what he is and where he comes from, and certainly not smart, loyal Ignis, and the secrets he's keeping.”

Gladio forced himself to concentrate on breathing. He got the impression that if he moved to grab Ardyn now it would be a horrible mistake. The man wasn't playing at teasing any more, there was real menace in his movements. “Whatever you think you know about them,” he said, forcing his voice to remain level, “and me, you're wrong.”

“Of course,” Ardyn replied, “ _Iggy_ keeps nothing from you. I'm sure he told you everything that happened in Altissia.”

Gladio grit his teeth, keeping his lips tight. He flexed his fingers, forcing his hand to open, and then drawing them back up into his fist, but he resisted the urge to punch Ardyn again, or to summon his greatsword, or his shield, and swing at the bastard. It might make Gladio feel better to do any of those, but it wouldn't hurt Ardyn. “I know he wore the ring,” Gladio said, forcing his voice to remain level as he spoke.

“And young Noct's antecedents showed him their favour,” Ardyn replied, brightly, stepping back and spreading his hands wide, as if inviting Gladio to believe him, or not. “They took his eyesight, but not his life. He must have really impressed them; they're usually such a bloodthirsty lot.” Ardyn sat back down, with a twirl, his coat swishing with the rustle of too many layers of cloth as he moved. “It didn't help him, though. It wasn't enough to defeat me.”

Gladio felt his blood run cold. Ignis had never said what he'd had to use the ring to fight. Gladio had known it had to be something big, something Iggy couldn't take without serious help. He'd thought it might be a daemon, something terrible the Empire had unleashed, like they had on Insomnia, or Leviathan herself if Iggy had been forced to finish what Noct had started before he'd fallen unconscious, or maybe even Ravus, who'd walked away when Gladio and Prompto had got there. Ignis had never volunteered the information, and Gladio had taken that as a sign that he didn't want to talk about it. The doctors in Altissia had looked him over and said he'd taken a bad hit, that one of his eyes was burned up, scarred over and done for, and the other was touch and go, and Ignis hadn't said otherwise, so Gladio had pretended he didn't know otherwise.

“It could have been avoided, you know,” Ardyn said, as if he was genuinely lamenting a change in his plans. “I'd planned to kidnap him and take him to Gralea. You would have dragged Noct across Shiva's frigid corpse on foot to get there if you had to.” Ardyn flashed Gladio a smile. “Ignis confirmed that one himself when I arrived on that altar, looking like you.”

Gladio concentrated on his breathing. If he concentrated on that, he wouldn't haul himself forward the way he wanted to, wouldn't drive his fist through Ardyn's head and all the way into the caravan wall behind him, if he concentrated on the way his chest rose and fell, the way the air sounded rushing through his nose, the way his teeth ached from how tightly they were clamped together. The very thought of Ardyn posing as him to Ignis, when Ignis had needed him, made him feel sick and angry at the same time.

Ardyn seemed to know it. “I suppose he didn't tell you that part, either,” he said, giving Gladio one of those smiles that only served to boil his blood in his veins. “He was so _relieved_ when you showed up,” Ardyn continued, sounding utterly delighted with himself. “You should have heard him, _Gladio_ , he called you,” Ardyn's voice twisted into a frightening facsimile of Iggy's as he called Gladio's name, and there was desperation, and relief, and hope in the tone, and it made Gladio's stomach flip, “just like that, as if you were his saviour in those moments.” Ardyn tilted his head, and gave Gladio a dangerous smile. “He was completely taken in. Do you think he'd do any better now?” Ardyn asked, his voice going low, and dangerous, “Or do you think he'd kiss me, perhaps he'd even do more--”

Gladio was moving before he caught himself, and when he did catch himself, he didn't stop. The caravan reverberated with the force of Ardyn falling back in the booth, the air filled with the fleshy smack of Gladio's fist driving into Ardyn's face. His own knuckles cracked with the impact, and Gladio didn't care, didn't care if he hurt himself. “You so much as touch Ignis,” he started, his voice a snarl.

Suddenly Ardyn wasn't where he had been. The man moved like smoke, and Gladio barely saw the shift, but he heard the voice come from far too close to his ear, and felt the too-hot breath against his skin. “Would you even know?” Ardyn asked, his voice low, and no longer lilting and taunting. “You're called away from him so much these days,” he said, his voice coming unbroken even when Gladio hauled around and drove his fist into the air where he'd have sworn Ardyn was. All Gladio caught was air, and he span again, to see Ardyn standing, unbothered and unblemished, in the centre of the caravan's kitchen. “Would you even realise if he was seeing you more often than you see him? The last time he ever saw your face it was me,” Ardyn said. There wasn't room to swing his sword, but Gladio called his shield and aimed a blow with that at Ardyn. He hit the caravan floor, and Ardyn was two feet from where he'd aimed. “How well do you think he remembers you now?” he asked.

“He knows me,” Gladio spat, out of breath with his efforts and too infuriated to continue holding back.

“He didn't then,” Ardyn said.

Gladio flashed his teeth at him, drawing himself up to his full height. Ardyn was tall, taller than Iggy, he realised, but not taller than himself. “He would now,” he answered. “You might have caught him when he was desperate, and exhausted, and he wasn't thinking straight,” Gladio said, breathing through his teeth. Noct had been in danger, and Iggy lost his cool, the same way Gladio would if it had been Iris in danger, he knew that, he'd known that, which was why he'd yelled at him only to feel bad about it five minutes later.

He'd known then that Iggy was liable to do something stupid if they couldn't get to him. He'd just never thought the stupid thing he did would be putting that damned ring on.

“But you won't catch him that way again,” Gladio said, wresting back control over himself from his temper. This asshole had pushed Iggy into doing something stupid that could have cost him his life. Gladio wasn't about to let him do the same to himself, now.

Ardyn looked him over, as if he was examining a particularly interesting specimen in a zoo. “Are you quite sure?” he asked.

Gladio bared his teeth at him again, but this time it wasn't in anger. “Maybe it's Noct's destiny to take you down for good,” he said, squaring his shoulders, and gripping his shield, “and maybe I _can't_ finish you off,” he added, giving a small twitch of a nod as he conceded that possibility, “but you're more daemon than man, and I bet if I drag you onto that haven and nail you to it, I can make you wish I could.”

Ardyn gave a low chuckle, as if he was genuinely amused at the threat. “Perhaps you'd like to try it sometime?” he offered.

Gladio inhaled sharply through his nose, and looked down it at Ardyn. He'd bested Gilgamesh, not through the strength in his muscles, but through the strength of his resolve, and his dedication to those that mattered. He couldn't beat Ardyn with brute force, either, but this was a mind game, and all he had to do to win was stop playing. “Touch Iggy, or Prompto, again, and I'll show you what an Amicitia's really made of,” he answered, his voice low, and steady. He curled his upper lip at Ardyn, in a dismissive sneer, “Now if you're done trying to get inside my head, you know where the door is.”

Ardyn smiled at him, reaching out almost idly to retrieve his hat from the table. “I've seen what an Amicitia is made of,” he said, bringing his hat up and settling it on top of his head with a small flourish. “It would be a shame for you to die like your father.”

“He died protecting his King,” Gladio said. There was no way Clarus Amicitia had gone down any other way. He'd have fallen first, because they'd have had to go through him to get to Regis, “his friend. If I go the same way, that's fine by me.”

Ardyn adjusted his hat with both hands, tugging the brim into position. “I'll hold you to that,” he said, reaching for the caravan door, and then he left.

Gladio watched as the man melted into the shadows cast by the spotlights, and it was only when he was very sure the man was gone that he let his shield disappear with a flash of blue light and faint sound like shattering glass. No one else had noticed he was here, he realised. The Glaives standing guard at the perimeter of light surrounding the caravan and vehicles hadn't moved from their posts, and the haven on the rocky ridge above was still lit, with the faint bustle of activity that was the rest of the Glaive starting to move as they woke in their tents.

He looked back into the caravan, which bore no sign of his having had a visitor. He'd felt the caravan rock with the force of his punches, had no one heard anything? Had no one on guard noticed?

Had he dreamed it? Had Ardyn only been inside his own head?

Gladio shook his head, forcing that train of thought from his mind, and went back to the bedroom. His boots were still there, as was his phone, which he checked out of habit.

One bar.

Very carefully, without moving it, he rang Ignis. It went straight to voicemail. “You've reached Ignis Scientia,” Iggy's voice said, clear, and calm, and unhurried, “I'm currently unavailable, so please leave a message and I will get back to you forthwith.”

It was nice to hear Iggy's voice, even for a moment, and Gladio smiled at the sound. He was drawn from his reverie when he heard the beep indicating Iggy's voicemail was recording. “Iggy, it's me,” he said. “We need to talk as soon as you get back, so wait for me in Lestallum. Don't go anywhere until you've seen me. And make sure you know it's me.” He frowned, adding that part to the message, but he had to do it. He didn't want to give Ardyn an easy way in. “Especially if you're really in Pitioss right now,” he said. Ardyn was watching them, it meant. Gladio had never felt so uncomfortable with the idea of being scrutinised. “I love you,” he added, before he hung up.

A knock came from the outside of the caravan, firm enough to shake the whole structure. “Rise and shine, big guy.”

“Coming,” he called back. He gave his phone one last look before he retrieved it, and pocketed it, then he stamped his shoes on.

**Author's Note:**

> Ardyn disguising himself as Gladio in Episode Ignis just played beautifully into what I wanted to do with this part of the series. Hi, hello! Atropa here, you can find me on tumblr at [AtropaAzraelle.](https://atropaazraelle.tumblr.com/) Feel free to say hi, I promise I don't bite.


End file.
